Yet Being Unperfect, an entertainment in four scenes
SCENE 1
DANCER enters dancing, although there’s no music, and dances up to an easel tripod, which is draped by a cloth. Dancer removes cloth, revealing a large cardboard sign: YET BEING UNPERFECT. Dancer dances briefly, then removes the sign, revealing a second sign: AN ENTERTAINMENT IN FOUR SCENES. Dancer dances briefly, then removes the sign, revealing a third sign: SCENE 1: “WAY.” Dancer motions for audience to look in the direction of the play and then dances off.
LIGHTS UP.
HE is in bed in his tiny apartment. His left arm is in a sling; his bandaged wrist is visible. His left knee and ankle are also bandaged and he reclines with his foot elevated on a pillow. All his fingernails and toenails are polished a bright red and femininely shaped. One cheekbone is taped up; the eye above it is blackened. Some of his left ribs are also broken, so he rests not on his back but tilted up on his right side. He has a crutch in easy reach. He is paying bills: writing checks, stuffing them in envelopes, etc. His face contorts with contempt for the money-grubbers who bill him. SHE enters wearing a backpack.
SHE: Hi!
HE: Hey there you!
She starts disencumbering herself.
SHE: Do you need to go to the bathroom?
HE: No, I’m OK.
She tosses him TV GUIDE magazine.
SHE: Then read me my horoscope.
He takes it up with mock reverence.
HE: Ahhh, “The Good Book,” as we used to call it in my family.
She extracts a plastic bag containing mangoes and shows him.
SHE: Look, I brought mangoes. I’m gonna make shakes!
HE: O do it! do it! do it!
She starts cutting up the mangoes and dumping them in a blender. In making the shakes, she fails to notice his struggles with the magazine.
SHE: Well, what does it say?
HE: Lessee, Horoscope… “Not all Geminis are breezy and boundlessly self-confident. In fact, with so many planets converging on work, money, and family matters, you may feel like running away. Try to remember that while it may not be easy to find happiness in yourself, it is impossible to find it anywhere else.”
She grunts. He automatically tosses the magazine aside.
SHE: What does it say for my Moon sign?
HE: Huh? Oh, uh…
He has to contort himself to reach where it fell.
HE: “Pisces: There are two routes open to you this week. The first may get you off the hook temporarily, but you will only be postponing the inevitable. The second may be painful in the short term, but you will eventually reap the benefits.”
SHE: Oh, just wonderful.
HE: They give a 900 number you can call if you’d like further information.
SHE: Can I use your phone?
HE: No!
She hits the blender. He tosses the magazine again.
SHE: What about my Rising Sign?
He again contorts to get it. He has to read loudly to be heard over the blender.
HE: “Leo: A terrific aspect between Mars and Neptune urges you to go about your business with confidence. There are new territories to explore, and life should be a lot more fun during the second half of the year. Tomorrow you will be better than you are today.”
She turns off the blender and starts pouring shakes.
SHE: You see? I knew this was the right time to do it!
She takes the magazine from him and hands him his shake.
HE: What do you mean?
She goes for her own shake, annoyed that he needs to be reminded. He suddenly realizes what she’s referring to.
HE: Oh, come on, not that!
She puts down her shake and gives him a look.
SHE: That.
She proceeds to unload the toy-store bag, taking out clay-modeling tools and placing them on a table.
HE: You can’t be serious.
SHE: I’m serious.
HE: No way.
She holds up a can of pink Play-Doh and gives him that look again.
SHE: Way.
SCENE 2
Dancer enters, dances up to easel tripod, and removes the sign, revealing a fourth sign: SCENE 2: “TAKE THAT, EVIL DICK.” Dancer motions for audience to gaze and then dances off.
HE: But it can’t be done!
SHE: Oh, of course it can be done!
HE: Well, maybe it can be done. But you can’t do it.
SHE: You don’t have to be a rabbi to do it.
HE: Oy!
SHE: But first let’s get you more comfortable.
While he talks, she changes and rearranges the pillows under his left side. She takes away one pillow from under his butt and slides in a fresh one to take its place. The old pillowcase has a sizable bloodstain. She stares at it hard.
HE: No, you don’t have to be a rabbi to do it. But I think you do have to be a serious devotee of the Kabbalah, and have a profound understanding of Jewish mysticism, if you’re gonna pull off a stunt like this. I mean, the magical technique necessary to actually create a golem, to make a statue of clay and breathe life into it – people put decades of study and meditation into stuff like that. You’re not even Jewish!
He notices her with the pillowcase.
HE: Is there a lot of blood?
SHE: It gets smaller all the time.
She peels off the pillowcase, sets it aside, and slips a new case on the pillow as he drifts into gloomy silence. She removes some imposing Judaic volumes from her backpack.
SHE: See? With these, I’ll make us a golem that’ll earn some respect.
HE: You know, most golem stories tend to be cautionary tales.
SHE: Oh yeah?
As they talk, she gets a chair, sits at the table where she’s put her tools and the Play-Doh, and starts arranging everything so she can begin working with them.
HE: Uh-huh. You see, I had actually begun doing some research about it, since you got me interested. Sometimes it’s like “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”: The golem is animated to be a servant but it keeps getting bigger and more powerful, and so must go back to being a statue. Or it starts wanting human feelings and experiences, a real soul of its own, and the only way to shut it up is to send it back down to the minors. Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Singer have written about the golem. There have even been a couple of golem movies. Most of them focus on Rabbi Loew in 16th-century Prague. His golem was so powerful that the emperor decided to cancel a pogrom against the Jews.
SHE: See? That’s what they’re good for: scaring away nuts!
HE: And predators.
SHE: Yeah!
HE: And bigots.
SHE: Yeah!
HE: And bashers.
SHE: Yes.
HE: Well, I certainly could have used one of your golems.
SHE: Every queer person in the country will be able to walk the streets in safety once this golem’s up and running.
HE: But if your golem’s on patrol in Brooklyn, how’s it going to protect someone in Nebraska?
SHE: But don’t you see? That’s the beauty of it! This golem isn’t even such a violent idea. At first it’ll have to squash some skulls, but once people realize that we have protection like this – friends in high places! – there’ll be no more bashing anywhere.
HE: You do paint a pretty picture.
SHE: Wait till you see me sculpt!
HE: Well go to it, with my blessing.
He goes back to paying his bills.
HE: But if the Golem Fund needs a donation, try me next month.
He tilts over an old beat-up envelope and shakes it: A few old postage stamps fall out. He picks one up and is about to lick it when she notices and freaks.
SHE: Don’t move! DON’T MOVE!
He remains frozen, with protruding tongue. She rushes over and plucks the stamp from his hand. She places it under an overhead projector and turns it on, revealing that the stamp bears the image of Richard Nixon.
SHE: You must never lick this stamp!
She snaps off the projector, moistens a sponge at the sink, and presses the stamp to it.
SHE: This is how you have to do it, always with a sponge. And when you put it on the envelope, you put it on UPSIDE DOWN!
She affixes the stamp upside down on his envelope. He tries not to laugh but can’t hold it back by the end.
SHE: See? That way! And you press it down firm.
She bangs it with her fist.
SHE: Take that, evil Dick!
She bangs it again.
SHE: Take that, evil Dick! THREE TIMES!
She bangs it again, harder.
SHE: Take that, evil Dick!
SCENE 3
Dancer enters, dances up to easel tripod, and removes the sign, revealing a fifth sign: SCENE 3: “WOO.” Dancer motions for audience to gaze and then dances off.
His laughter is clearly hurting him, but he’s still laughing as he speaks.
HE: Don’t make me laugh!
Reminded, she winces with remorse and freezes up. He is caught in a painful spasm from his broken ribs. She waits for him to come down from the pain, silently mouthing some sort of prayer or blessing. Once he does, he smiles at her.
SHE: Do you want me to get the pills?
He shakes his head no.
SHE: You sure?
HE: I don’t take it until I’m ready to go to sleep.
SHE: Are you tired?
HE: Nah. You know, Gustav Mahler was with his wife when she went into labor with their second child, and he tried reading Kant to her, to get her to focus her concentration and overcome the pain.
SHE: Did it work?
HE: Oh, she was in agony.
She laughs.
HE: And hearing him drone on and on like that just drove her even crazier!
He starts chuckling too but has to stop right away.
HE: But you know, Mahler was right. Even she admitted it – later on! Pain exists in the mind, and the way to eliminate it is to redirect the mind. He was just waving the wrong thing at her.
SHE: I thought I’d try Hegel with you.
HE (Jackie Mason): Better a bagel you should try! What, I’m in pain but I shouldn’t eat?
He indicates her tomes.
HE: Just don’t read to me from those.
SHE: No, I’m the one who has to concentrate there.
HE: There and beyond too, huh?
SHE: That’s right. You have to go into a trance to receive the word that brings your golem to life.
HE: In the German movie, the word was written down on paper and placed in an amulet at the golem’s neck.
SHE: No, I like the other way better.
HE: Gonna carve it into the golem?
SHE: Yeah, right across his forehead! It’s gotta look really punk, you know? We need a fierce kind of magic this time.
HE: How many kinds of magic are there?
SHE: Oh, there are all kinds. Predicting the future is an act of magic. So’s warding off evil and deflecting danger. Mahler was trying to use magic on his wife.
HE: You think so?
SHE: Sure. Magic is using the will to modify reality. People do it all the time, in all sorts of ways. And I don’t mean they’re just superstitious, although lotsa people are. No, I mean that every day, people make things happen just by willing them to happen. And the different kinds of rituals and ceremonies people use to focus their minds are all different kinds of magic. And lotsa times, doing one kind of magic leads you to another kind.
HE: You mean, we start predicting the future and warding off evil and healing the sick, and pretty soon we’re invoking spirits and animating golems and doing God knows what else.
SHE: Exactly.
HE: Sounds addicting. Is there a 12-step program for it?
SHE: “Shamans Anonymous.”
She launches into a routine, using a thick redneck voice. He tries not to laugh.
SHE: When I take to prophesyzin’ and levitatin’ and manifestin’ signs of mirack-ulus behaver, I call my buddy Emmett at the feed store, and he talks me through ‘em.
He laughs and so does she, and then he’s caught in another spasm, worse than before. She grabs the bloody pillowcase and holds it up to him. He gets drawn into what she tells him.
SHE: I’ve been saving these! I’m gonna make you some kind of dress or gown — a garment, a RAIMENT, suffused with your own blood! You’ll be invincible in it! Wherever you go, whatever’s happening around you, it’ll protect you! It’ll be your shield in this world, no one will be able to hurt you when you wear it, ever! Can you imagine how it will just freak everybody out? Can’t you just see their faces? I mean, when people see you in this, they’ll just lose their minds, you know? It’ll be great!
HE: I can’t wait to wear it.
SHE: Oh, it’s gonna be great!
He takes her hand.
HE: Knock, Knock.
SHE: Who’s there?
HE: Woo.
SCENE 4
Dancer enters, dances up to easel tripod, and removes the sign, revealing a sixth sign: SCENE 4: “I’M GONNA FIX THIS WORLD TODAY.” Dancer motions for audience to gaze and then dances off.
SHE: “Woo” who?
HE (camping): Woo-hoo yourself, sailor!
SHE (camping back): Now you stop…!
They smile at each other and then she goes to the table, opens the can, and takes out a hunk of pink Play-Doh. She kneads it in her hands, sniffing it.
SHE: This stuff is so cool! I just love the way it smells!
She holds it up to his nose.
SHE: Here, smell the Play-Doh.
HE (sniffing): Mmmm… Play-Doh-y!
She sits at the table and starts sculpting a golem: fashioning the figure of a man and continually enlarging it with each successive lump of pink Play-Doh. She works steadily throughout their conversation: The can has an inexhaustible supply, and by the end, her golem is much larger than that can could contain. Neither of them react as though anything odd is happening.
HE: I trust that this golem will be anatomically correct?
SHE: On the contrary: His penis will be so large, they’ll have to rewrite the textbooks.
HE: With illustrations by Tom of Finland.
SHE: Oh, this golem’s gonna break new ground, believe me.
HE: You know, Milton Berle was supposed to have had a prodigiously large penis.
SHE: Yeah, and so did, uh, whatsisname…
HE: Huh?
SHE: Oh, you know… Sgt. O’Rourke!
HE: Yeah, Forrest Tucker, yeah! That’s right! THE CRAWLING EYE!
SHE: Huh?
HE: He starred in THE CRAWLING EYE.
SHE: Was that a good one?
HE: It was better than good. It had these big eyeballs from outer space, with long snaky tentacles, and Forrest Tucker went around chopping off their tentacles with an ax.
SHE: He couldn’t stand the competition, I guess.
HE: The bigger they are, the meaner they are.
SHE: That’s exactly the way I make ‘em, too!
HE (Irish brogue): Sure and ’tis a sad state of affairs when day-cent, hard-workin’ people have to be makin’ go-lems for themselves, just so’s they can go about their business and not be inter-fared with.
SHE: Oh, I don’t know. I mean, yeah of course, the police should be protecting people, but the cops can be such phobes.
HE: A lot of them do seem to have emerged from the same fetid gene pool that spawns bashers – spawns bashing of all types, not just anti-queer.
SHE: It’s better if bashers are met with some impersonal brute force that’s exerted in proportion to their own destructiveness.
HE: And if that means that a couple of them wind up getting torn from limb to limb…
SHE: Well, let them consider it a learning experience.
HE (Laurel): You know, Ollie, I believe they will!
SHE (Hardy): They soi-tainly will.
SHE & HE (simultaneously): Mmm, mmm, mmm!
SHE: Don’t you worry. We’re on the side of the angels with this. That’s why it’s gonna work.
HE: You know, maybe you should make the golem a woman.
She stops sculpting, regards her work with uncertainty.
SHE: Gee, you think so?
HE: Sure! A mighty fertility goddess kicking bashers’ butts, what could be better? Homophobia and transphobia don’t exist without misogyny. Feminists and queer people always have the same enemies – what truly terrifies these guys is women and womanliness. So why not carve the 50-Foot Woman of their nightmares and let her stomp ‘em?
SHE: I dunno…
HE: How come?
SHE: Well, it’s… I mean, a golem’s just a mindless hulk, right? A lump that’s been forced into some semblance of life, to work for you and protect you.
HE: Yeah.
SHE: Well, that sounds like a guy kinda thing to me.
She resumes sculpting.
HE: You know, I really can’t deny it.
Dancer enters dancing and flashes a grin at one of them, who smiles back. Dancer swings past and smiles at the other, who also smiles back. From then on, except for occasional moments when Dancer gets physically close to either of them and locks a brief gaze, they never give any indication that they’re aware of Dancer’s presence.
HE: You know, the word “golem” occurs in the Bible.
SHE: Oh yeah? Where?
HE: In Psalm 139. It talks about how God sees you even before your substance has been formed. The line is literally, “You have seen my golem.”
SHE: That’s what it says in the Bible?
HE: Yeah, but not in the translation I have here.
SHE: How does yours go?
HE (pointing): It’s the King James version, over there.
She stops sculpting, picks up a small Bible from a shelf, hands it to him, and resumes sculpting.
HE: This Psalm is attributed to David, but some Jewish traditions say it’s by Adam.
SHE: What does it say?
HE: Lessee … Here it is, Verse 16. Uhh … Lemme back up a little.
He reads very naturally and with total sincerity. By the end, he’s really impassioned.
HE: “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
“My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.”
He holds up a finger and enunciates the next nine words carefully, indicating that it is the translation of the golem reference.
HE: “THINE EYES DID SEE MY SUBSTANCE, YET BEING UNPERFECT; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
“How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!
“If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.
“Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men.
“For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain.
“Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?
“I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
“And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Fade up the intro to a ‘60s single by Gene McDaniels. Until they sing, none of the three give any indication that they hear the music or his singing, “He took a hundred pounds of clay, and then He said, –”
SHE, HE, & DANCER (singing with record): Hey, listen! I’m gonna fix this world today!
BLACKOUT
(This play was written in 2003 and premiered in September of that year as part of STAGES, the First National Transgender Theater Festival, in New York City.)
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NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 